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Community Corner

Neighborhood Bites: Five Guys

Burger chain has restaurants everywhere but calls Lorton home

Even though its corporate headquarters is on Furnace Road, Lorton didn’t get its own Five Guys restaurant until 2007. The wait made no difference; the store on offers the same burgers and fries that have made Five Guys a Washington D.C.-area institution since the first one opened in Arlington 25 years ago.

The Furnace Road location is a corporate training restaurant, so it typically has more staff present, but other than that it’s just like every other Five Guys, of which there are more than 770 in 40 states and Canada, said Molly Catalano, director of communications.

Five Guys was founded by Jerry and Janie Murrell and their four sons (a fifth son was born later) and now all “five guys” are still very much involved in the business, as are some of their children, Catalano said.

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Jerry had set aside some money and as the oldest son approached college age, the story goes, he gave the boys a choice: college or business. They chose the burger business, Catalano said, and set out to make burgers the way they loved them, “simple but fresh with high-quality ingredients.”

For 15 years, the Five Guys operated just five stores in Northern Virginia and turned down numerous requests to expand, Catalano said, but as the boys got older they saw the potential in growing the business. So in 2002 they decided to sell franchises in Virginia and Maryland.  A year later, the rest of the country was opened for franchise rights, and as of April 1, 2011, there were 774 Five Guys, with more on the way, Catalano said.

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“The demand was just really there,” she said, noting that Five Guys has been fortunate to continue growing even in the recession.

The first store on Columbia Pike no longer exists, but very little else has changed at the chain over the years.

The menu still consists of hamburgers, hot dogs and fries and very little else, with no plans to make any changes. As they say on their website, “There are a lot of great milkshakes out there, and at this point we think that others are doing it better than we could!” And whether you’re in Lorton or Los Angeles, it’s the same dining experience, with over 250,000 possible ways to order a burger, Catalano said.

“Our customers appreciate that we keep things simple,” she said. “We’re in the burger business.”

Corporate headquarters is in Lorton because it’s convenient for the Murrell family, all of whom live within 20 minutes of the office, and its location off Interstate 95 is a plus, Catalano said. That’s why it also made sense to use the Lorton location as a training store, she added.  

8971 Ox Road, 703-690-9999. A regular hamburger costs $5.19, add 60 cents for cheese, toppings are free. A plain hot dog costs $3.39 and regular fries are $2.69.

 

 

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